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Showing posts from October, 2015

How to Get SMS Alerts for Gmail via Twitter

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How do you get SMS notifications on your mobile phone for important emails in your Gmail? Google doesn’t support text notifications for their email service but Twitter does. If we can figure out a way to connect our Twitter and Gmail accounts, the Gmail notifications can arrive as text on our mobile via Twitter. Let me explain: Twitter allows you to follow any @user via a simple SMS. They provide short codes for all countries ( see list ) and if you text FOLLOW to this shortcode following by the  username, any tweets from that user will arrive in your phone as text notifications. For instance, if you are in the US, you can tweet FOLLOW labnol to  40404 to get my tweets as text messages. Similarly, users in India can text FOLLOW labnol to  9248948837 to get the tweets via SMS. The short code service of Twitter can act as a Gmail SMS notifier. You create a new Twitter account, set the privacy to private and this account will send a tweet when you get a n...

How to Get Things Done with Trello

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My work involves prioritizing, organizing and managing tasks, information and ideas. I have tried hundreds of todo lists and project management tools to get the job done but finally settled on using Trello. It is now my swiss knife where I do everything from collaborating with my wife on shopping lists to building products for my company to teaching students to writing a book. Trello provides a very flexible way to do this all and it has a whole ecosystem of apps and extensions to make your life simpler. If you are new to Trello, here’s a getting started guide that will help you understand the basics of Trello and how you can use the service to manage work and get things done. What is Trello and why I need it? Trello is like a todo list on steroids. At the core of it is a card which is the fundamental unit of information and it can be around lists. Here is a simple Trello card . It has a title with something I plan to do in the near future. What follows is more complex ...

How to Create RSS Feeds for Google Search Results

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Google Alerts, you probably know this, offer an easy way for you to create RSS feeds from the Google search results of any query. This is a good option if you are looking to monitor when new web pages are indexed by Google that match your search query. If you have never created feeds with  Google Alerts  earlier, here’s a quick primer. Type your search keyword, expand options, choose “Automatic” for sources, choose “All Results” for “How Many” and set “RSS Feed” as the Delivery Method. Google will create an RSS feed of web search results that you can subscribe in  Feedly  or another RSS Reader. Please see the Google Alerts tutorial to write more advanced search queries. Better RSS Feeds for Google Search A big limitation with feeds created using the “Google Alerts” approach is that you’ve limited control over the feed and it won’t include search results from all over ...

Make your WordPress Website More Secure with Single Sign On

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Your WordPress website has a public login page, often found at http://ift.tt/1FGSnly , and it is possible for someone to gain access to your site by guessing your password through repeated trial and error method. To harden your WordPress security, it is therefore recommended that you  password-protect  the WordPress admin folder and also use 2-factor authentication. Secure WordPress with Single Sign On WordPress Single Sign On offers an even more secure option for protecting your website from brute force attacks as you ‘outsource’ the authentication part to WordPress.com. Once enabled, the login screen on your WordPress website is disabled and you are required to sign in to your WordPress.com account in order to access the admin dashboard of your own self-hosted WordPress blog. There are several advantages here: Since WordPress.com accounts support 2-factor authentication, the the same level of security is now enabled for your blog...

How to Save Tweets for any Twitter Hashtag in a Google Sheet

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Wouldn’t it be nice if Twitter had an Export button? You search for a trending #hashtag, or an old tweet , or your brand name, and all the matching tweets get saved in an Excel or Google spreadsheet. And this archive would just update itself in the background as new tweets arrive. Meet Twitter Archiver , the simplest tool for saving tweets, forever It is a Google add-on that takes 5-minutes to setup (watch video tutorial ) and will easily capture all tweets that match particular search terms in a Google Spreadsheet automatically. You can use the tool to monitor tweets around any conference hashtag, learn what people are saying about your brand, track popular search terms, save tweets from any geographic location and more. Save all kinds of tweets with the Twitter Archiver How to Save Tweets in a Google Spreadsheet To get started, install the Twitter Archiver and it will create a new Google Spreadsheet. Go to the Add-on menu, choose Twitter Archiver and select the Authorize me...

Find the Person Behind an Email Address

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You have received an email from a person with whom you have never interacted earlier and thus, before you take the conversation forward, you would like to do some research on the Internet to know more about that person. How do you do this without directly asking the other person? Google is the most obvious place for performing reverse email lookups (just Google for the email address) but if that person doesn’t have a website or if they have never used their email address on public forums, Google will be of little help. No worries. If you only know the email address of a person and nothing more, here are some ways that may help you uncover the identity of that unknown email sender. How to do Reverse Email Search #1. Find the sender’s location Open the header of the email message and look for lines that say “ Received: from ” and are followed by an IP address in square brackets. If there are multiple entries, use the IP address mentioned in the last entry. Now paste the IP address...

15 Stunning Ways to Increase Facebook Page Likes

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With over 1 billion users on Facebook, you can always go viral, and this will happen, only when you have such a user base on your Facebook fan page. Here I will be sharing few tips that will help you to get more likes on your Facebook page. Tips to get more Facebook Fan Page likes:

Create a Beautiful Photography Website in Minutes

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John is not a professional photographer, the day job keeps him busy, but he’s an enthusiast who loves photography. One fine evening, he got a call from someone in his friend’s network who was willing to hire John for a photo shoot but, before signing the contract, they wanted to see more of his work. John has captured some stunning and impressive photographs over the years but they are clearly not sorted and arranged in a manner that can be easily shared with a client. His photographs can be found all over the social web – from Facebook to Instagram to Flickr – but, for lack of time and technical know-how , he never considered building a portfolio website to showcase his work. How to Make a Photography Website There are WYSIWYG website building tools, Squarespace and WordPress for example, that make it extremely easy for you to build beautiful photography websites but the little downside with these tools is that you’ve manually update them every few weeks or months. Siftr is a n...

How to Tell if Apple Magic TrackPad 2 will work with your Mac

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Apple’s Magic Trackpad 2 is a new and redesigned multi-touch trackpad that has a larger surface area than the previous trackpad , includes rechargable batteries and supports Force Touch, a technology that lets you do more with a single touch. For instance, you can press the trackpad to select a word on a web page, apply more pressure and it will pop-up the word definition. Apple Magic Trackpad 2 costs $129 but it isn’t just expensive, it may not be compatible with your older iMac or Macbook. The Apple website suggests that the new Magic Trackpad 2 requires Bluetooth 4.0-enabled Mac running El Capitan (OS X v10.11 or later) and thus it may not work with MacBooks and iMac that are older than 3-4 years. If you are looking to buy the Trackpad but are not too sure if it will work with your Mac, here’s how you can perform a quick check. Does your Mac have Bluetooth 4 for Magic Trackpad 2 Click the Apple logo in the menu bar, select “About this Mac” and check for the version number. If ...

How to Create Photorealistic Screenshots of your Mobile Phone

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Capturing screenshots on a mobile phone is easy. If you have an iPhone , press the Home & Sleep buttons and the screenshot image will be saved in the Photos app. Android users can press the Volume Down & Power button simultaneously to capture the screen. And in the case of Windows Phone, press and hold the Start and Power buttons at the same time to take a screenshot. That’s a raw screenshot saved in your camera roll but if you would like to use that image in your website, a presentation or even in your Apps Store listing, consider adding device frames. This is important because people should be able to figure out whether a screenshot was captured on an iPhone or a Microsoft Lumia or a Google Nexus phone. The device frames can be actual photographs so your screenshot images appear gorgeous and more realistic. Realistic Device Mockups for Beautiful App Screenshots A layered photo editing tool like Adobe Photoshop (Win/Mac) or Pixelmator (Mac) makes it really easy for you...

How to Create Photorealistic Screenshots of your Mobile Phone

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Capturing screenshots on a mobile phone is easy. If you have an iPhone , press the Home & Sleep buttons and the screenshot image will be saved in the Photos app. Android users can press the Volume Down & Power button simultaneously to capture the screen. And in the case of Windows Phone, press and hold the Start and Power buttons at the same time to take a screenshot. That’s a raw screenshot saved in your camera roll but if you would like to use that image in your website, a presentation or even in your Apps Store listing, consider adding device frames. This is important because people should be able to figure out whether a screenshot was captured on an iPhone or a Microsoft Lumia or a Google Nexus phone. The device frames can be actual photographs so your screenshot images appear gorgeous and more realistic. Realistic Device Mockups for Beautiful App Screenshots A layered photo editing tool like Adobe Photoshop (Win/Mac) or Pixelmator (Mac) makes it really easy for you...

19 gorgeous Instagrams of fall's changing colors

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Nothing gold can stay , but Instagram can make it last forever — at least in our memories. Before you burrow into Netflix for the next six months until warm weather returns, get out and take a look at the reds, oranges and golds around you. We rounded up 19 of the best #fallfoliage Instagrams from around the world to kickstart this autumnal travel season. See also: 7 perfect fall foliage drives for taking in the scenery From Alaska to Moscow, it seems like there's one thing everyone can agree on: Autumn leaves are really, really pretty. Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments. Read more... More about Travel , Destinations , Lifestyle , Travel Leisure , and Autumn source: Mashable http://ift.tt/1FRukFj